


Such Happiness as Two People Dream Of

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ladyhawke AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 08:08:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18257228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: In which it's the Arrangement and not the Apocalypse that provided the catalyst for their relationship... and in which that relationship was not allowed to stand.And so, for a week, they've been on this journey to figure out exactly what has happened and how to undo it.





	Such Happiness as Two People Dream Of

    It’s selfish of him to dread nightfall. It’s Crowley’s _turn_ , after all, and he’s not so mean as to deny him his turn! He doesn’t like the thought that he suffers, during the day. He wishes he could know, but how would he ask? It all happens so quickly, they’ve never been able to exchange words.

 

    It’s been a week like this… During the day, Aziraphale is as he ever was. Crowley, however… At first he’d thought he’d changed on purpose, though what purpose he couldn’t say. He’d been a bit miffed when Crowley hadn’t said a word to him, but he’d clung to him. He’d slept, mostly, he’d stuck close and rested, and every so often he’d lift his head to give Aziraphale one of those sniffs that came with a flick of his tongue, and that had been it.

 

    Then the first night came, and Aziraphale had _changed_.

 

    He hates it. He hates it! He understood the next morning why Crowley had not spoken to him all day. His memories of the night had been very dim and distressing. His unearthly intelligence had been stripped from him, he’d been brought down to something… perhaps well above the intelligence of the average bird, but he’d lost so much of himself. If any of his powers remained in him during the night, he wouldn’t know, for it never occurred to him to use them.

 

    He knows that he knows Crowley. That he thinks of him as his strange, large mate and wants to be close to him. He imagines Crowley experiences something similar. That he has enough of himself but never enough of himself. That he clings to Aziraphale because he does still know him even if he only half knows his own self. He knows Aziraphale is safety.

 

    And he understands, too, the feeling that means the change is upon them both. It’s the one thing which compels him to leave Aziraphale’s person.

 

    Now that Aziraphale understands as well, it’s easier. When the sun is far enough in its descent, he stops and kneels, where there’s room, and sets down their pack. Crowley has been curled around his neck, tail and nose both tucked inside Aziraphale’s traveling robes. Every so often, his tongue had flicked out at the base of Aziraphale’s throat, and when it did, Aziraphale would tuck the map beneath his arm and reach up to stroke at his head gently.

 

    “Come on, my dear.” He murmurs, and first Crowley tenses around the back of his neck, a gentle squeeze before he slithers down along one arm, and to the ground. He turns, looking up at Aziraphale. There is enough of him behind his eyes, emotion Aziraphale is used to reading there. At least Crowley keeps his eyes, Aziraphale can’t imagine his are the same, it would be hideous for them to be. He has something familiar, for Crowley… and Crowley, he has to deal with everything recognizable about Aziraphale disappearing.

 

    It takes them both, then, and suddenly he’s looking up at Crowley, who sits on the ground with his legs crossed. He hops up onto his knee first, comforted by the first gentle touch, fingertips running over his head and his back.

 

    Crowley speaks, and the words are familiar, but Aziraphale can’t understand them all like this. He settles into the palm of Crowley’s hand when it’s offered, and settles himself down into it, feels the other hand cover him. Safe. Loved. He hates this, but Crowley will take care of him until dawn comes.

 

    ‘Angel’, Crowley says, and he does know that, that’s him. ‘Miss you’, Crowley says, and Aziraphale knows it’s the same thing he says to Crowley, during the day. ‘Eat you up’, Crowley says, and he doesn’t understand the words but he understands the sweet fondness in his voice.

 

    And then he does the thing he’s done at the start of each night since the first. He noses gently at the top of Aziraphale’s head, and then he brings him up to one shoulder, and his own wings come out.

 

    They’re enormous, and so beautiful. He sees brand new colors in them now, brilliant and shimmering. Crowley is the best possible mate, he feels that quite keenly in this state, big and strong and beautiful. He flutters from shoulder to shoulder and preens everything he can reach of his wings, which is hardly any of them. But Crowley coos gently at him, and laughs, and strokes his wings in return. And that is… familiar. But it’s incomplete somehow, in ways just beyond his grasp.

 

    “Yes, I love you, too.” Crowley says, folding his wings away into nothingness, and Aziraphale understands that perfectly. He calls him ‘angel’ again, and says more that washes over Aziraphale’s current understanding like water. He can’t keep his wings, because he needs to carry their pack. Not that they have very much, but what they do have he has to bear on his back. He shoulders it, and unfolds their map. He relies upon Aziraphale to reorient them properly, but Aziraphale can do that still. They’ve found a rhythm, after all…

 

    He takes off in the direction they’ve been traveling, and once Crowley is following, he drops back to ride on his shoulder most of the night. He doesn’t need to sleep in this form any more than he does in his own, and his wings don’t mind the exercise even if his legs are tired after a long day of walking. He would rather sit on Crowley’s shoulder, though, and tuck himself close as possible to the curve of his neck. He takes comfort in the closeness. The first night he had strayed too far and felt all of a sudden as if he had lost himself. He’d been in a panic when Crowley had caught up to him, and he’d nestled into his hands and quivered for long moments, his heart beating rapidly, Crowley’s worried voice floating through the night air and winding around him. His name a hundred times, and ‘angel’, and more. Crowley had held him to his own heart, he’d felt it thudding, felt it slow, and his own had, too…

 

    Since then, he’s made sure to stay close, night or day. It had been terrifying to him to be, for even that brief moment, no more than a bird. And then the shock of realizing that he oughtn’t to be, that there had been so much missing from him, more than the rest of the night.

 

    When the rain starts, Crowley is quick to unshoulder their pack, and to get the map into it, his wings coming up around them. He carries the pack in one hand and Aziraphale in the other, cradled against his chest as he had been that awful night upon their reunion.

 

    He whispers, soothing and apologetic, mostly nonsense to Aziraphale now, but it soothes him nonetheless to hear it, and he doubles back to a small cave they had passed. It’s not much of one, but its enough to fit them. Aziraphale returns to his shoulder, to preen at the wet feathers he can reach, and this time Crowley chuckles and moves him, and finds just enough room at the back of the cave to lie on his belly with their pack for a pillow, and his wings out and folded on his back.

 

    He squirms a little as Aziraphale hops up and down his spine, and he sighs as he does his very best to take care of Crowley’s great wings.

 

    Aziraphale pulls a loose feather, with a little flare of triumph, and Crowley reaches back to take it from him. To say something in a low, sweet rumble. Aziraphale continues his task, and half-listens to Crowley rummage in their pack, to consult their map and do whatever else he thinks to do.

 

    When dawn approaches, Crowley urges him to sit on a low, flat stone. He nuzzles at the top of his head, and then he sits back, and looks at him.

 

    “Angel…” He says, such a weight of sorrow in his voice.

 

    And then Aziraphale is sitting there looking at a snake.

 

    “Well, come on, my dear.” He holds out his hand, and Crowley is quick to move up his arm, to drape around the back of his neck and get into his clothes. It’s chilly out, and Aziraphale is warm… but he knows he’s more than that.

 

    It’s raining, but not hard. If he carries their pack in hand, he can use his wings to shield them.

 

    He picks up the pack and the map, and stops. There, one of Crowley’s feathers, which he dimly recalls finding loose and tugging free. A notched nib, a note in the map’s corner.

 

    _You always take such care of me_ , it reads. _I love you so_.

 

    “Oh, my dear…” He ducks his head, lips finding Crowley’s sleek head. “And I you. I love you so much.”

 

    Crowley turns, the flick of his tongue catching Aziraphale’s lower lip.

 

    “Yes, Crowley, dear.” He laughs softly. “I know, I know.”

 

    It seems so unfair that they never have lips at the same time now…

 

    They’ve had their Arrangement now for nearly five hundred years. They’ve been lovers a little less than… but the two seem to go naturally hand-in-hand, and they’d loved each other…

 

    Oh, they’d loved each other from the start. From the Beginning. It had blossomed about them so suddenly when they’d stood by the gate, he’d mistook the feeling for his alone, though he hadn’t understood it then. He’d told himself for ages he couldn’t possibly love a demon, and it became increasingly clear over the ages that he could, and he did.

 

    Once they’d begun working together a bit, it had been natural, falling in together… more time in each other’s company, more opportunities to discover how alike they truly were, and more time to rub off on each other… Trading off who would travel to do both their work allowed them to settle down, to not be so nomadic, to have…

 

    To have a home. Which they had established together, and kept together, and they’d gone from claiming they would be taking turns living in it and going off abroad, to trying to maximize the time they spent there together. And after a couple hundred years, they’d agreed it was silly pretending they didn’t like each other’s company, and they did already have _one_ binding agreement between the two of them-- two if you counted the house itself-- and didn’t it make sense to have another?

 

    Two hundred and fifty one years together, in a week’s time. They’ll have had two hundred and fifty one years of loving each other. Barely any time at all before they were stolen from each other. He still remembers that first embrace as if it was yesterday, how it had felt to find himself in Crowley’s arms, the elation… that first kiss, and how quickly they’d felt sure of each other.

 

    He had been shy, inexperienced… So had Crowley been. They had embarked upon the act of love together, no one leading and no one following. Since then they’d certainly experimented, and there’s been nothing Aziraphale hasn’t liked. He thrills to Crowley taking control, he soars at seeing him submit himself, he is complete whenever one of them returns home from afar and they join each other…

 

    He misses it. A week of being so near to each other, of being in near-constant contact, but barred from the intimacy of the marriage bed. It is still Crowley, but it is a Crowley who is trapped, who is unable to communicate much, who is locked away from a portion of himself… a Crowley who is not allowed to retake his favored shape when Aziraphale has his own. There is a line, he thinks, that cannot be crossed when they are suffering this curse, this punishment.

 

    He strokes the side of Crowley’s neck with one fingertip, and wonders which words Crowley makes sense of, when he speaks to him. When understanding filters through in bits and pieces, what leaps out at him? Which words does he know, which does he half-know?

 

    “My little love, my dear.” He says, and feels the way Crowley’s chin presses flat to the soft flesh over his collarbone, the way his tongue darts out to drink the scent of him. “We’ll reach the town by nightfall. I’ll get us there. If the weather worsens, you’ll be able to find us shelter. And in the morning, the library. You just stay with me and you’ll be safe, you’ll hide in my clothing like always.”

 

    He finds an empty spot on the map, where they have already been, when they stop for a while-- he miracles a stump dry, to sit on, and plucks a loose feather from one of his own wings, and notches it to write with.

 

    _My dearest love, it’s all I want, except to be with you again as we always have been. I miss the feel of your lips against mine_.

 

    He packs the ink back into its place, and he bundles his quill with Crowley’s, hopes both will remain safe once packed so. He admires the way they look together, and runs a fingertip along the twin edges. He strokes the paired feathers along Crowley’s back, smiling at the gentle squeeze to the back of his neck as he does.

 

    He packs the quills carefully.

 

    They walk.

 

    They’re within view of the town, when the change comes. The rain has been off and on, and for a while the sky is clear. The moon is bright overhead as Crowley walks through the streets with Aziraphale perched atop his head, periodically preening at his hair.

 

    “Right, Angel.” He reaches up, stroking his back. He says a bit more, as Aziraphale focuses on grooming him, and how nice it is to be stroked in return, the best his mate can do for him. Gentle scritches through his feathers, strokes that smooth them out again.

 

    Aziraphale coos softly, and Crowley does his best to repeat the sound back to him, gentle. Despite the chill of the night, he feels warm where he is, his feathers puffed up, Crowley’s hair a comfortable nest. He would like to be able to warm Crowley up, too, but Crowley’s so big, there’s so much of him… Aziraphale can’t cuddle to all of him at once, to warm him.

 

    When the clouds roll back in, Crowley takes them to a stable, climbing quickly up to the hayloft. He says something to Aziraphale, agitated, and Aziraphale is dimly aware that he does not like horses. That he will like them even less when dawn comes and they switch places. The thought is not quite there, that he will be in a position to protect him then, that he will be his whole self again. He lets Crowley pick him up from his spot atop his head, and hold him in both hands, and cradle him to his heart. He listens to him speak, in a quiet hiss, words tumbling out of him desperate and loving.

 

    They share the hayloft like one big nest. Aziraphale nuzzles into Crowley, coos softly to him and lets the answering murmurs wash over him.

 

    He’s not used to sleeping, but he must have. When he wakes, he’s curled in a ball around Crowley’s coiled form, one wing unfurled to shelter them both.

 

    There’s another note, on the back of the map this time.

 

    _AZIRAPHALE- DO NOT LET ME DOWN ON THE GROUND NEAR THE HORSES I AM TRUSTING YOU. I don’t think Hell will give me another body if something happens to this one. Not any time soon._

_PS- I miss my arms around you, and yours around me._

 

    “Oh, dearheart…” Aziraphale prods him awake, encourages him up to his usual place draped across the back of his neck, tucked into his clothing. “Of course you can trust me. I would never let anything hurt you, serpent mine. I miss you-- everything about you.”

 

    _I shall protect you as you do me, always_. He writes. He’s fairly certain neither of them will be granted another vessel in the near future. Not after this… _PS- I miss taking your prick into me_.

 

    His hand falters a little writing it, but that’s about as much intimacy as they can have, isn’t it? They can’t touch each other that way, they can’t speak the words… He can leave him a note. It’s not as if anyone else will see it.

 

    Crowley lifts his head from within Aziraphale’s clothes, and looks up at him, and Aziraphale kisses his nose and smiles.

 

    “Let’s go, then. It sounds as if it isn’t raining hard… I can take us to the library today, we may find something at this one.”

 

    He has to be careful this time. This library is a surprising little gem, a collection of books on demonology, in the little town’s church. If the curse was laid on them by Crowley’s side, he might find answers here, possibly. But before…

 

    The last library was in a university, and Aziraphale had become so engrossed in his research that he lost track of time. He can’t let that happen in a church.

 

    He strokes at Crowley’s smooth body, smiling as a tongue flicks at his nose.

 

    “Yes, and I you.” He scratches under his chin. “ _Dearheart_.”

 

    He clings closer than usual, as Aziraphale descends from the hayloft and passes by the stabled horses, and so Aziraphale pets at him a bit more and then covers him up with the cowl of his traveling robes.

 

    They only have so much parchment for note-taking, and he shall have to make more ink before long, but Aziraphale is able to make notes if he finds anything important.

 

    He wishes they could afford… he doesn’t know. A blank book to fill with page after page of research, and page after page of their words for each other. But they have what they have, space must be rationed carefully…

 

    He hopes for answers, hopes to find there’s a demon out there who’s known for laying curses just like this one, hopes that this is Crowley’s people. If it is Hell that’s done this to them, Aziraphale thinks he can cope. If it was Heaven? He doesn’t know what he should do.

 

    He loses himself in research again, but this time he feels Crowley grow restless, and this time he pulls himself back from his reading when he does. He rushes to get them away from the church, and down a dark alley.

 

    “Sorry, my dear, I’m sorry.” He says, as Crowley slips from his arm down to the cobblestones. “You’re all right, through. I am sorry… Oh, Crowley…”

 

    “Aziraphale…” Crowley says, though by then Aziraphale is hardly himself. He flies up to perch on Crowley’s shoulder, hopping in place until wings unfold from him. Crowley scratches gently at his back, between his own wings, and lets him work a while, before his wings fold away again, before he takes Aziraphale in his hands.

 

    He nuzzles at him then, and gently grooms him to the best of his ability, and then he rests Aziraphale on his head, shoulders their pack, and goes foraging.

 

    There’s not much they need that they can’t manage on their own. Day or night, there’s always one of them who has powers at his command. Neither needs food, neither needs sleep. The needs they do have are simple and few.

 

    Crowley searches the town through the night, making note of what sits where, of the entrances and roadways and public buildings. Keeping his eyes peeled for coins in the street-- he finds one, and it isn’t much but it will go towards what it needs to. Stopping at a well for water for them both, which Aziraphale drinks from one cupped palm. Crowley takes care of them, in the ways he can while Aziraphale is stuck like this, helpless, dumbed.

 

    Crowley sets their pack down in another alley, and sets Aziraphale atop it, and says some words-- some of them powerful, his hand waved once over the pack, his gaze intent. Others, to Aziraphale, though most flow past his understanding.

 

    He returns to Crowley’s shoulder, only to be placed once more on the pack. Crowley gently taps his head, and speaks his name. Once more, he resumes his perch, and once more Crowley insistently places him back down.

 

    He understands, but he doesn’t like it. He fluffs up his feathers and he stays with their things. Crowley pulls a small pouch from the pack. Holding the strings in his mouth, he changes by choice this time, and disappears into the shadows alongside the building. Aziraphale can’t see him, but he isn’t far.

 

    He needs him to not be far, he is filled with the fear of what may happen if Crowley does go too far from him, his mate… Will he forget again? Will he be a bird until dawn? And then-- what of Crowley? Lost? Parted from him? Forgetting him?

 

    It feels as if an eternity passes, before Crowley is lifting him again and kissing him. He doesn’t feel he shall ever be calm, but Crowley whispers softly to him, and it doesn’t have to make sense.

 

    He says ‘love’, again and again. He calls him ‘angel’. Presently, he offers him a little cracked wheat from his palm, and Aziraphale doesn’t need it, but he takes comfort in it. He shows him a folded piece of parchment and then places it in their pack with Aziraphale’s notes, a gesture which means nothing to him in the moment.

 

    They walk around a little more before Crowley shivers and returns them to the stable, to bed down in the hay for warmth.

 

    In the morning, Aziraphale remembers the parchment-- blank, waiting for notes! He suspects it was stolen somewhere, but he kisses the top of Crowley’s head anyway.

 

    On the map, a few new words.

 

    _Not as much as I miss yours_.


End file.
